How Cercas’s Soldiers of Salamis Deals With Memory, Loss, and Honor After The Spanish Civil War

Right through the center of Spain runs a deep scar. This scar has many dimensions. In terms of time, it spans the most of the 20th century; and at certain points in time, it cut the land that Spain consists of up into pieces. But the deepest scars run in the Spanish psyche and in its individual and collective memory.

A lot of the novel Soldiers of Salamis deals with this scar. At first, the narrator of the book believes that this scar has nothing to do with him, that it does not affect him. I thought so too. I bought into the author Javier Cercas’s subtle subterfuge. I sort of believed that the character Javier Cercas is autobiographical of the author Javier Cercas, and let’s face it, since there really -was- a pro-fascist conservative Spanish poet called Rafael Sanchez Mazas, I started to believe that the whole novel was, as the character Javier Cercas claims, “a true story”.

…and in a certain sense, a symbolic sense, it is a true story.

I want to make an embarrassing confession. Until quite recently, I had known very little about the Spanish Civil War. I had always wanted to read more about it, but nothing ever gave me that little “push”. I started reading about it a month or two before reading the book under review, and discovered that the more you read about it, the more you wanted to read about it, but… well, here’s the pinch: It’s hugely complex. You could read a bunch of Francoist propaganda and believe that the Spanish Republicans had been pure evil, and indeed it is true that some atrocities had been committed against the Roman Catholic Church by Republicans, but the situation isn’t quite as black and white as that. The church in Spain had always backed the rich landowners, instead of standing up for the poor, and later on the church also backed the Fascists — so it is not too much of a stretch that some people might have identified the church with the oppressors and oppression.

Before I end up writing a long essay on the Spanish Civil war, let me try to keep it short by sticking with how the 2 Javier Cercas’ books, Soldiers of Salamis, (See what he did there? An author with the same name, writing a book inside a book with the same name — how meta) fit in with all of that.

The way that the real author Javier Cercas treats his character “Javier Cercas” in the book, subtly points the reader to the problem of memory and cultural amnesia as far as the war is concerned. The problem with ‘memory’ in that regard, is that once General Francisco Franco Bahamonde had declared himself victor of the Spanish Civil war, hostility did not cease. He still persecuted the former Republicans and built up a vast propaganda scheme to exalt himself and his Fascist ideals, in which the Republicans, Socialists and Communists were always the villains, and the Fascists/Nationalists were the shining, splendorous heroes.

He even managed to twist it into saying that the (Spanish) Republicans had been the rebels (whilst they had actually been the legitimate democratically elected government, which he and his Fascists rebelled against and finally managed to overthrow). Franco also averred that the Republicans were “anti-Spain” and of course, the fact that they were secularist didn’t help their case in religious Spain.

So, those of the Republicans who managed to escape being shot, ended up silenced and marginalized, or in exile. While Franco was conducting his “Cultural cleansing program” hundreds and thousands of Spaniards were shot en masse and dumped into mass graves. Many of the corpses of those shot which had been exhumed, had their hands tied behind their backs. Even mothers of young children were shot in the back of the head and kicked into mass graves with other “dissidents”. Their children were given to Nationalist families in some cases. In his book The Spanish Holocaust, Paul Preston avers that 200,000 people were executed between 1936 and 1945 by the fascists.

I am wandering a bit from the book again here, but you get the picture. Franco then induced a sort of ‘national amnesia’ in which everyone had to conspire in hiding the ugly truth of his brutality, lest they themselves became victims of it. (Stalin, anyone?)

After Franco died, Spain was lucky enough to have had good King Juan Carlos named by Franco as his successor, and as many of us know, he was actually a spanking good chap who helped Spain along on its teetering legs towards democracy, despite a second right-wing coup attempt taking place, which failed.

Now that Spain is democratic, what might the problem still be, you, I, and Javier Cercas the author and the character Javier Cercas the journalist-author might ask. Well, the problem has been that all the roads, buildings, and national monuments in the country were named in honor of the Franco dictatorship and its heroes. All the right-wingers whose family members died in the right- vs. leftwing conflict, could go and lay flowers on the graves of their deceased, and say prayers there, or whatever else you would want to do at a beloved one’s graveside.

…but all those on the Republicans’ side who had been murdered by the Franco regime, had simply ‘disappeared’. Their bodies were lying in unmarked graves, and often times, in unmarked mass graves. Those who died Falangists, were heroes, but those who died Republicans were reviled as vermin. (Yes, yes, pretty much like the Nazi’s and the Jews, though in this case it was not racially based. You just had to be against Franco to be vermin.)

Right, so, with all of that in mind, the Javier Cercas book starts off with Cercas the protagonist all obsessed over some pro-fascist poet who got a cushy job in Franco’s establishment before he drifted off to go and be a dissolute millionaire somewhere, and … well, you feel a bit bored reading about all of this and you start to skim a bit and to wonder if you want to see the book through, and then, suddenly it starts to get interesting. That is, once Javier Cercas the character starts to look for Miralles.

And then, once you had read through the last bit and perhaps pecked away a tear or swallowed a lump in your throat, you realize: Hey! The brilliance of this book is not only in the emotional rendering of the last bit — which is pretty cool just on its own, but you realize that a lot of why people go ‘wow!’ about the book, has to do with its cleverly constructed structure.

I only realized this, I think, when I read some interview with (the real) Javier Cercas the author. (Not the character in the book- Cercas’s book-character doppelganger has a lot of potential for confusion.) The real Cercas said that before he wrote this book, he thought the Spanish Civil War had nothing to do with him; ancient history, as he saw it. About as ancient and as far removed as the battle of Salamis (The Battle of Salamis had been a naval battle fought between an alliance of Greek city-states in 480 BC) had been. …or was that actually/also Javier Cercas the character before he wrote HIS book Soldiers of Salamis..? (See what he did there? Very metafictional….)

In any case, so, with the story of Rafael Sanchez Mazas, the fascist poet, told, you would imagine that that would be whole story. Only, it’s not. The other side of the story is Miralles’ story. But I shall not spoil the reader on that.

Suffice it to say that in 2007, Spain passed a new law. Perhaps I should conclude with a quote from Wikipedia about this law:

“ The Historical Memory Law principally recognizes the victims on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, gives rights to the victims and the descendants of victims of the Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, and formally condemns the Franco Regime.

The conservative Popular Party and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) both voted against passage of the law.

In protest to the law, the Popular Party accused the Socialist Party government by way of the Historical Memory Law of weakening the political consensus of the transition to democracy and “using the Civil War as an argument for political propaganda,”

The Republican Left of Catalonia rejected the law on the basis it did not go far enough.”

It looks like Spain might finally be starting to remember and acknowledge those like the character Miralles and the friends whom he had to leave behind.

As for the book under review : once you had finished reading the book — if you think about the story he wrote carefully, you realize that Javier Cercas the author wants us to realize by the end of the book, the motives behind why a certain Republican did what he did when he looked the other way. Damn, this Cercas guy is subtle. Read the book if you want to find out what I am alluding to!

AFTERWORD: A while after writing this article, I realized that I had omitted to mention the work of the Association for the Recuperation of Historical Memory (ARMH) in Spain.

At about the turn of the millennium, some Spaniards (and ex-Spaniards speaking from exile) started to say that they wanted to find the bodies of their family members who had been victims of the Nationalists.

I knew from prior reading on the subject that some mass graves have already been exhumed, but when I wanted to look up on statistics, I found an article , which, by its implications, tells us that the scar running through the Spanish psyche is far from being healed.

I find it incredibly sad that people would actually feel ashamed that their relatives had been Republicans. Only when the Manichean construct of “good” Nationalists vs “bad” Republicans is shattered and exposed for the phantasm that it is, can all of Spain’s children truly come to terms with their identity and their past.